


and you know you're a terrible sight (but you'll be just fine)

by thefigureinthecorner



Category: The AM Archives (Podcast), The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Bonding over trauma, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 07:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20422292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefigureinthecorner/pseuds/thefigureinthecorner
Summary: Their friendship is weird.First off, Mark can’t decide if the circumstances of his and Oliver’s meeting are first or second on his list of “very-fucked-up-ways-to-meet-a-person.”Or: a ship that went from crack ship to actual genuine ship very, very quickly.(title is from The Hype by Twenty One Pilots)





	and you know you're a terrible sight (but you'll be just fine)

Their friendship is weird.

First off, Mark can’t decide if the circumstances of his and Oliver’s meeting are first or second on his list of “very-fucked-up-ways-to-meet-a-person.” Being found by a time traveler entirely by chance after being put in a time-travel induced coma by the secret government organization that kidnapped and experimented on him for years, or being trapped together in that very same government agency with someone else who’d been experimented on _ by _someone else who’d been experimented on and also happened to be out to murder him and the people he loved? Tough decision, that one.

But they do bond over the mutual fucked-up-ness of the situation. More than anyone in his life, Mark feels like he’s able to _ talk _ about his experiences with Oliver— _ really talk _ about them. It’s more natural. Oliver doesn’t force anything out of him. Oliver doesn’t pity him, or cry over him, or surround him with guilt and apologies and the same old attempts at comfort. He just listens, shares his own stories, commiserates. He _ understands _. He might not have had all the same experiences as Mark, but he’s had enough similar experiences to actually get it, and that’s more than Mark has ever had from anyone since he got out.

Joan seems like she’s getting a little annoyed by how often the two of them clam up right when she enters the room-- her eyebrows furrow a bit whenever it happens, and she tends to speed up whatever she’s walked into the room for-- but she never says anything about it. What she _ does _say is that she’s glad that Mark’s found someone he can talk to.

“I know you haven’t really had that since you got out. I’m glad.”

It sounds genuine. Her voice is the happiest it’s been since Helen as she says it.

\----

He sits with Oliver when he calls his siblings for the first time in over two years. Two brothers, Jason and Daniel, one younger and one older, and a twin sister who’s atypical, like him. A shapeshifter named Olivia.

“Oliver and Olivia, can you believe our parents?” Oliver doesn’t sound like he’s actually all that mad, more like he’s just trying to beat Mark to the inevitable comment about the names.

“Oh, I can. Listen, there’s a reason I go by my middle name. I mean, who the hell names their kid ‘_ Byron Bryant?’” _

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yup. And I mean, hey, at least Oliver and Olivia is a better set of twin names than these twins I knew in high school, Rebekka and Rebecca.”

“That’s… you just said the same name twice.”

“Yeah, well, one had two K’s and one had two C’s.”

“What the fuck.”

“Yup.”

“That shouldn’t be legal.”

“Nope.”

He calls Olivia first, says he’s closest with her and she deserves to know where he’s been.

“Hey, Olivia,” he greets her when she picks up after the second ring.

“Oliver? Holy shit, is that really you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s really me.”

“What _ happened _ to you? I haven’t spoken to you in-- what, two years? I tried to call but you never answered and I got worried something had happened, I had no idea where you _ were-- _”

As Oliver goes into the basic details of his time at the AM— nothing specific, he’s not going down that rabbit hole now— Mark presses up against his side, a silent show of moral support. Oliver gives a small smile of appreciation.

The two of them talk for an hour. About what happened, about how he’s doing now, about Mark for a little bit, about Helen, about Oliver’s new job.

“Hey, I’ve still gotta call Jason and Daniel too, but I’ll talk again soon?”

“Yeah. Say hi to them for me, huh?”

“Will do. Bye.”

“Bye.”

The call ends and Oliver slumps into Mark a bit, sighing heavily. Neither of them say a word, but Mark puts his arm around Oliver’s shoulders and lets Oliver lean into the touch.

\----

They get to talking more. About more than just the AM and what it did to them, about more than Wadsworth, about more than weird experiments and traumas on top of traumas and lost time. Oliver, for all his trouble with emotions, is a remarkably open person given someone who will listen to him.

Joan gets used to the fact that Oliver’s over more often than not now; Oliver’s still working on getting his life back in order, so his apartment isn’t in much of a state for visitors, and Mark still hasn’t gotten an apartment of his own because he didn’t actually make a whole lot of money on the road and he quit his job early on top of that, so Joan’s is the only available place for them.

Mark invites Oliver over for some of their movie nights and learns that Oliver is also big on musicals and fully sides with him in his and Joan’s argument on High Society vs The Philadelphia Story, to Joan’s further annoyance. He’s seen a couple of musicals on Broadway— the job he had with the DOD paid pretty well, apparently, and he’d had the opportunity to head out to New York City and see some for himself. Mark had never had the funds or time to do so but he’s wanted to for so long, and now there’s all these new musicals that have come out in his time at the AM, and god, wouldn’t it be nice to go.

“Maybe we could go together someday,” Oliver offers. “The job Mr. Sandoval offered me also pays pretty decently. I could save up.”

Mark shares his photography and the two of them talk about the places they’ve seen, the places they’d love to go— Oliver wants to go to Egypt, or to China or India.

“They’re the birthplaces of alchemy, did you know that, that nobody can trace the exact origin but it’s believed to be from one of the three? I want to go see if I can find any evidence that it’s because of atypicals, y’know, like me. Alchemists. And then maybe people thought it couldn’t be done because the people who tried to copy them couldn’t actually transmute stuff, or something like that. I don’t know if I’ll find anything, but it might be fun to try.”

Mark shares his desire to travel the world and see everything there is to offer and meet people and eat new foods and take new photos and just exist, far, far away from all the people and places who hurt him, far away from all of it.

“We could go together,” Oliver says again.

“Yeah, that sounds nice.”

\----

Oliver talks science at him, and Mark discovers that a lot of what Oliver has to say is actually significantly more interesting when he’s not under such high stress. Molecular structures and how he bends and shapes them to become other things; how he bumps things around on a subatomic level to change atoms at their fundamental level, how he’s even able to sense something that small, and how incredibly vast the universe is, and how to make some of those really cool-looking chemical reactions from his high school science class that he still remembers to this day. Hell, even the Siri rant is far more interesting than Sam had implied it was; Oliver describes how he can _ feel _ the molecular changes building up in the people around him, how he knows it’s going to cause long-term repercussions, because he can sense those tiny subatomic shifts that will build up into a domino effect.

Joan comes home on multiple occasions to find them on the couch together, in the middle of some conversation or another about the way the world works. She gives this kind of weird, knowing smile whenever she catches Mark’s eye while Oliver isn’t looking, like she’s figured something out that Mark hasn’t yet.

The serum had worn off after a couple of days, as it was meant to do, and Mark isn’t sure how to feel about it until Oliver offers a few months down the line to try and teach him how to do alchemy.

Which, honestly, is pretty fucking cool.

Alechemy is just one of those things that seems too cool to pass up, given the opportunity. It’s one of those things you learn about but you’re told it’s impossible, told it never would work; nobody can change chemical structures, silly, it goes against science. Santa isn’t real, you won’t marry the prince, and alchemy doesn’t work.

But Oliver can do it. It’s an ability that Mark didn’t even know existed— Oliver got the the AM Well after Mark had gotten trapped in the 1800s— and it’s genuinely pretty incredible to watch him work and feel the atomic shifts alongside him, the tiny little particles buzzing in the world around him. Oliver demonstrates how to mess around with proton counts to turn nickel into copper, tells Mark to try when he’s done.

He does.

He succeeds.

He’s proud of himself, and Oliver’s proud of him, and Mark’s got this big huge grin on his face that Oliver’s mirroring, an expression that he’s never, ever seen on Oliver, and there’s this warm feeling building in his chest, and—

Oh.

_ Oh _.

He’s in love.

… Fuck.

\----

He starts testing the waters. He doesn’t even know if Oliver likes guys at all, let alone _ him _. Oliver doesn’t talk about being in love much, and when he does, it’s only ever about that woman he dated before everything happened with the accidental bomb and the AM. So he starts talking about his own exes, the boys he’d dated in college, his bisexuality. Maybe he’s just being hopeful, but he thinks he sees a glimmer of something hopeful in Oliver’s eyes when he brings it up.

They keep talking. They keep having movie nights. They keep getting closer.

Joan’s already gone to bed when Oliver dozes off during one of those movie nights, eyes slipping halfway shut, the worry lines in his face relaxing as he slowly slumps sideways into Mark’s side. His hair brushes Mark’s chin, he starts mumbling a little bit in a half-awake and not-quite-half-coherent voice about the many uses of some chemical that’s way too long for Mark to remember the name of, and Mark can’t hold the “I love you” back anymore.

It spills out of his mouth, rushed and reckless, and Oliver is definitely awake enough to hear it. There’s no going back now.

“...Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Hm.”

Oliver sits up fully again, turns to face him, movements sluggish and face tired. Mark grimaces.

“Fuck, I shouldn’t have said anything, just. Here, I’ll turn off the movie if you’re tired, go back to bed, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make things weird, and—“

He’s cut off by a kiss. On his cheek, not on his lips, but surprising enough that he stops himself mid-sentence and whips his head to look Oliver in the face.

He’s smiling. “Calm down, coma guy, I think I kinda like you too.”

That prompts some teasing— “oh, only kinda?” “shut up”— and teasing turns into more kissing, and another movie, and actual cuddling this time without that weird awkward tension between them.

“This is nice,” Oliver says as he’s dozing off a second time.

“Mhm.”

They fall asleep like that, tangled around each other on the couch, and it’s one of the first full nights of real sleep either of them have gotten since Helen.


End file.
